Welcoem to posts!!
in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
Markus Prummer is the German translator of the Ten Thousand Things. He sent me a recent review translated from German:
Robert Saltzman is a great new discovery for me these weeks. He can best be located in the circle of radical nonduality (Rupert Spira, Joan Tollifson, Nisargadatta); in his style and presentation he is pleasantly down-to-earth and refers above all to the necessity of one's own experience.
This own experience, in its suchness, its simplicity, and its completeness, is not usually noticed, let alone appreciated, by "the seeker," as the search for "the higher," even the attachment to the mere words and statements such as "consciousness is everything," "there is no I," "I am consciousness," etc., obscures in a very subtle and mostly unrecognized way the experience of the present moment.
"The Ten Thousand Things" has caused quite a stir and uproar in the spiritual scene in the USA due to its radicalism, sobriety, and uncompromisingness, thanks to the translator that the book has now been made available to a German-speaking audience.
Clear recommendation to purchase.
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¡
Carson Boyd:
How about scheduling another gathering?
Robert:
Hi, Carson. đ It looks like that will happen for ten days at the beginning of December. Elena Ascencio asked if I would do it, and I agreed. She will be here staying in the same beautiful place where we did the last gathering and has generously offered it again as the meeting space. Ricardo Madrazo has offered again to do the video documentation. It should be fun.
Carson Boyd:
Cool. I will most likely be there.
Robert:
Great. I look forward to meeting you, Carson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQiM6...
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Q: Hi Robert. I have a question. Can an Ego ever be mature? This relates to something you have said, that you have met very few adults in your life. Could you elaborate on this please, and thanks.
A: Yes, an ego is mature when it recognizes its own limitations. That is what I mean by a real adult.
Q: Can you know that ego itself is a limitation? And that by living only from this very individual and personal position you put yourself in real limitation?
A: All the great minds have known their limitations and said so explicitly. Lao Tzu, Socrates, Einstein, etc.
The limitation is not âego,â but the human mind itself which evolved to survive and reproduce and has no ability to know answers to ultimate existential questions. Ego is a psychological fact, not a limitation.
There is no such thing as objectivity, Gonzalo. Objectivity and selflessness are fantasies that "spiritual" people like to indulge in. There is nothing else but a "personal position." It begins at birth and ends at death. The personal position can be more or less comprehensive and aware, and can even attain deep understanding, but cannot disappear.
The ones who claim to be speaking objectively are lying to themselves and hence, lying to others. No one knows what any of this is, how it got here, where it's headed (if anywhere). Those who speak as if they did know are the biggest fools of all.
Q: It seems hard to admit that we are so limited, so many traditions and "spiritual masters" have proclaimed that we could be free from so much conditioning and live free.
A: Yes. I am saying the same thing. It is possible to be free of much conditioning, but not all of it. And the most important conditioning to be free of is the idea of "Godâ and the claim that consciousness is "unlimited." No one knows anything about all that.
All we really know for sure is that "myself" seems to exist as a focal point of conscious awareness. Anything beyond that cannot be known, but only believed in or not believed in.
An adult, as I have said, recognizes that limitation, and does not indulge in metaphysical conjecture or so-called "spiritual" speculation.
Q: It is good to observe our minds at work. Knowing that much of our thoughts are just repetitive patterns that donât mean much and then not following them. It is just a constant observation and knowledge of our own minds.
A: Yes. That is what the keen minds have said throughout the ages:
Not knowing is true knowledge.
Presuming to know is a disease.
First, realize that you are sick;
then you can move toward health.
--Lao Tzu
Not knowing anything is the sweetest life.
---Sophocles
Depending on nothing, find your own mind.
---Dogen
Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.
---Immanuel Kant
The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
---Albert Einstein
I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
----Richard Fynman
The state we call realization is simply being oneself, not knowing anything, or becoming anything.
---Ramana Maharshi
luthar.com/.../you-know-that-you-know-nothing.../
The problem with âspiritualityâ is that lesser minds cannot comprehend human limitation, but want to imagine that some âmasterâ had it all figured out. Thatâs nonsense. The real âmastersâ were entirely aware of their ignorance of ultimate matters. They spoke with the language they had and from their personal backgrounds and experiences. That is all one really has.
Q: That is really good from Ramana.
A: Yes. Itâs honest and helpful. Maharshi spoke in his language and from his background. I speak from mine, but we are saying the same thing.
Q: Thanks, Robert. As always interesting chatting with you, and it makes my thinking clearer.
A:. My pleasure. The "secret" is to know that only the best minds speak truthfully. The others lie to themselves constantly and so lie to others without even knowing it. Donât let the self-appointed teachers, preachers, and gurus hypnotize you with their declarations of certainty. Certainty is the sign of a second-rate mind.
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Q: As a result of severe childhood trauma I developed DID [Dissociative Identity Disorder]-- 4 personalities. Years were spent on integration. During, that time for 20 years one of the selves practiced Buddhism and thought that would be the answer. 7 years ago after my brother's killed himself, I felt finally felt safe resulting in integration in the blink of an eye. All seeking slipped away and any desire to hear or read any spiritual books. There was no inner war or conflict but tremendous grief that needed processing. It became clear to me how we make up selves and I couldn't do that anymore.
Then 2 and a half years ago my town and house and every single thing I owned burned up. Not one thing left. All sense of certainty died...impermanence is real. All desire to own things are gone. I saw how our things become embedded with our identity. But during this trauma all other traumas started washing over me, both personally and universally. I cry a lot right now for all the suffering I see in our world. Like letting go of Buddhist identity,, I've had to let go of trying to reach or be any state. Let go of the happiness path this western world pushes us into. Be with what arises. But sometimes there is such a feeling of being lost...where is home? There is no me and I feel lost but I can no longer create a me because who is the I that creates a me? Sometimes it is very confusing.
Can you say anything that might help clarify this? Thank you so much and I am sorry to be so long-winded with my question.
A: Hi, Renee. Since I have not been through your extreme experiences, the early ones leading to dissociation and then the loss in the fire, it is hard for me to advise you, and I certainly don't want to assume that I understand what you have gone through and are feeling now. This is to say that I have no facile instant wisdom.
You wrote, "There is no me and I feel lost but I can no longer create a me because who is the I that creates a me?" Well, I don't see or feel an "I" who creates a "me." That is not my experience.
I am not saying the following should apply to you. Given your years dealing with multiple personalities, your experience of what âmyselfâ is and mine might be so different that my observations are not germane to your situation.
That said, for me, âIâ and âmeâ are one and the same: the outcome of being born a human animal with certain inborn traits, modified by later experiences. "Nature plus nurture," as this is sometimes said. I have no feeling of creating an identity, nor any feeling at all of an âIâ that creates a âme.â
My so-called âidentityâ may be characterized by physical attributes (âRobert is a manâ), by things I do (âRobert is a photographerâ), etcetera, but that is âRobertâ as seen from the outside. Inwardly, I feel no fixed identity at all, but just find myself doing what I do and saying what I say, and I donât know what that adds up to. To you, as I understand it, that feels like being âlost.â I can see that angle, but to me, it feels more like being free just to live with the point of view, thoughts, and feelings I have without any need to defend that or to occupy an identity.
Just to be perfectly clear, Renee, I am not saying that you can look at the question of identity in the same way. We are all different and must deal with our own thoughts and feelings in the ways we do. However, I wonder if you really need to create anything. Perhaps you could just be as you are in each moment without trying to figure out what that is.
I am sorry for your suffering. I wish you well.
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Hi Robert.
I'm reading your book The Ten Thousand Things again. I've done the non-duality Tony Parsons, John wheeler, Sailor Bob thing. By done, I mean read all the books, been to meetings, personal conversations, phone calls. I even had my satori in 2014: "oh this is it and once seen it never goes away.â It went away.
My question: Are you saying the opposite of the âyou are awarenessâ guys? They'll say you are not your thoughts or feelings, you say that's all I am, my thoughts, feelings, no one looking from awareness?
Many thanks,
Clayton
ď Hi, Clayton. I donât think I am saying the opposite of anyone. I express what I see, feel, and think without regard to what others claim to know or believe.
I see things naturalistically, by which I mean that some 13.8 billion years ago all we now call âthe Universeâ was concentrated into a tiny mass perhaps the size of a soccer ball which exploded outward and continues expanding as I write this. There is robust evidence for this view.
What we call "the Universe" might be the one and only universe, or there could be multiple universes--perhaps even an infinity of universes. No one knows because no human is in a position to know such things.
What âIâ am, seen naturalistically, is a living being that was born some 76 years ago on one insignificant planet amid countless plants as the result of the sexual fun and games of my now-departed parents.
That planet, revolving around a rather third-rate star located near the edge of one particular galaxy that is one of two trillion such galaxies that formed around 4.5 billion years ago as the intense heat of that Big Bang explosion cooled down enough to allow molecules to exist which, existing first as hydrogen gas, and later as swirling dust clouds of various elements, conglomerated into a firm mass: our Earth.
Upon that mass, the first primitive life forms appeared around 4 billion years ago and gradually evolved into the species we see today. That is what âIâ am-- an evolved life form with a beating heart and a nervous system--before the ânothing but consciousness really existsâ people begin their hypothesizing, logical flim-flam, and appeals to the testimony of so-called ârealized beings.â
Mine is a naturalistic view of reality. No philosophy or metaphysics needed I find robust evidence in evolutionary biology, astrophysics, and cosmology for that account of what exists, and little against it.
Those who demean science as "materialistic," to me sound like scaredy-cats who, when faced with ideas that don't match their preconceptions, deal with that cognitive dissonance by name-calling.
When people say, "All 'I' am is pure consciousness" or "nothing exists but consciousness"âand assert that with questionless conviction and a complete lack of epistemological modesty--I canât even listen anymore. That kind of talk is just absurd to my ears. Itâs babble with nothing to back it up.
As I see it, no one knows what any of this âreallyâ is. Any claim to know looks to me like pure egotistical inflation and never an actual "jnana."
To me, it makes more sense to see âawarenessâ as one among many faculties of nervous systems than as some kind of container or field in which nervous systems arise or as the âmaterialâ from which nervous systems are constructed, but I donât KNOW that.
Seeing naturalistically, not idealistically, is just the way my mind works. I lean more towards understanding things scientifically and less towards traditional dogma or philosophical idealism. Philosophy may be interesting, but its conjectures cannot be backed up with any solid evidence. In my view, the philosophy one embraces is "chosen" pre-logically and later logic is used to justify the philosophy that best meets one's largely unknown needs and biases.
When I say that I find myself awake, I mean that I am free of attachments to unsubstantiated beliefs, such as claims that consciousness is real but the material world is not real or is less real. No one is in a position to know that, I say.
For all we know, consciousness evolved naturalistically and is entirely dependent upon living beings, not the other way around. For all we know, what we call âawarenessâ is simply another word for ânoticing,â which is what living entities do with the nervous systems we have.
So for me, as for Socrates, "awake" is when you admit to yourself that you and your fellow humans don't know jack shit about ultimate matters.
Be well.
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ZOOM WITH ROBERT
PUBLIC Q&A
Sunday, April 18th. Noon, New York Time.
us02web.zoom.us/j/83158714561
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SUNDAY, MARCH 21st, 1 PM New York time.
OPEN ZOOM MEETING FOR READERS AND OTHERS WITH QUESTIONS FOR ROBERT
us02web.zoom.us/j/4930241662
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Q: Robert I hope this finds you well. My wife is requesting a favor. Could you please send along the direct link to 4T with the photos? Currently, she is only able to pull up the copy without the photos or third-party sellers who are selling it for $250 and above. She recommends your book to her students and needs to forward the link from Amazon with the $35 price.
Peace.
A: My pleasure.
www.amazon.com/Ten-Thousand-Things.../dp/199935352âŚ
Some people might prefer the 4T audiobook read by the author:
www.newsarumpress.com/the-ten-thousand-things-audiâŚ
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www.newsarumpress.com/the-ten-thousand-things-audiâŚ
The Ten Thousand Things audiobook, read by Robert
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Talks, meetings, and replies to questions from Dr. Robert Saltzman. Ph.D., author of The Ten Thousand Things, and Depending On No-Thing.